Are you Hung?

As it turns out, the best thing about Ha Long Bay wasn't the amazing landscape, it was our amazing tour guide.

Mike and I arranged to be part of a group tour of Ha Long Bay which included a bus ride to and from Ha Long City, lunches, dinners, boat rides, a cave tour, a mountain hike, kayaking, swimming, etc. Since we decided to ride up on our motorcycles we skipped the bus ride and met the group in Ha Long City. We met them, as planned, for our second lunch of the day (unplanned) the day after we arrived, at a restaurant on stilts owned by the tour company. We were introduced briefly to our tour guide, a tidy Vietnamese chap, and then to the other members of the tour, including: Victor, a documentary film-maker from Montreal, Rusty, a screenwriter from Los Angeles, a couple of Aussie blokes, serveral French people, a good-looking older Danish couple, a distinguished Vietnamese couple living in Hong Kong, and some German women working for a government agency in Vietnam. How continental!

After lunch I came downstairs to meet Mike and determine how our bikes would be cared for while we were on the boat. I couldn't quite remember our guide's name, so I asked politely, "are you Hung?" Mike immediately cracked up and that misphrase became the theme of our tour. No strangers to sophmoric humor we also were (are) enamoured with the duong, which is the unit of Vietnamese currency. This leads to much hilarity in everyday interchange. Today the cleaning lady wanted to work under-the-counter for the laundry service, but at the same hotel rate, so I slipped her big duong and she was very happy. Strange, you're not laughing. I guess it's contextual.

I'm tempted to jump ahead, but I won't. The tour of Ha Long Bay was very beautiful. It was foggy and cool, we ate every meal like it was our last, and we met some interesting folks - namely the Danish duo who, as it turned out, were international ballroom dancing judges - but compared to our other encounters it was rather unspectactular. The highlight of our trip was definitely our guide, Hung. He took us on a hike, up about 1000 feet of slippery, muddy, rocky terrain that both challenged and exhausted everyone in the group. The older people didn't even attempt it. By the time we got to the bottom, I was covered in sweat and mud (especially around my ass) from slipping and sliding all the way down. Hung, who was wearing dressy sport slacks and one-dollar chinese slippers, went up and came down bone dry and spotless.

After our three days asea, we returned to Ha Long City and our motorcycles and started our voyage home. Hung had a friend in Hanoi who was selling his Minsk and we arranged to meet him the next day at his house to see the bike and check out his crib. By this time we were seasoned Minsk riders abroad, so we decided that a more adventurous route was in order. Moving along Highway 18, we found a tiny red line on the map that branched off around Pho Moi. It took us a few U-turns to find that line in real life, and when we did, our excitement was quickly punctured by a nail in Mike's rear tire. Thankfully, this occurred right in front of a xe roa, or motorbike repair shack. This particular joint was occupied by one mechanic and six dudes, eyes-almost-shut stoned. We had a spare tube, so the mechanics buddy quoted us a price of 5000 duong (about 30 cents) to repair the tire. This involved removing the rear wheel completely, axle pin and all, much like a bicycle tire. The whole operation lasted about 10 minutes (including a sheaf of cigarettes, provided by Mike, to a round of approving nods). We gratefully gave the stunned mechanic 50,000 duong, and hit the narrow dirt road with a bit more caution.

That sentiment quickly evaporated with the condition of the road. Soon we were dirt biking along a BUMPY dump truck track. This road was the main conduit for a series of brick factories situated along a wide, casual river. I can't accurately describe the beauty of this rural path, but imagine Mike and me on a made-for-teenager dirt track with impossible to remove grins plastered widely across our faces. On the right was rice paddies populated by oxen and women in those traditional pointy hats. On the left were these ancient brick factories, precariously built of bricks of course, exposing the whole brick-making process. On the road itself were a mix of Russian dump trucks and generations of villagers pedalling their bicycles. We rode 25 or 30 kilometers along this road and it was RAD! At one point the inner tube strap holding my bag onto the rear rack broke sending my stuff onto the road. I honked to Mike and turned around to fetch my stuff. By the time I got back Mr. Cho he was surrounded by a group of curious farmers and their kids. I can sum up the entire English vocabulary of the usual rural Vietnamese person thusly: "hello!" So with a round of double-hellos and a couple of quick photos we were off.

Returning to Hanoi, we quickly became lost. But by now this was standard procedure, so we pulled over, made hand signals, conversed with several ill-informed shop-keepers and made for a best guess direction. Our lives were shortened by a few months thanks to the crazy-ass traffic, but we miraculously found our hotel again and fell asleep only minutes later.

The next day we travelled thirty minutes south of Hanoi to meet Hung.

Nothing could have prepared us for the overwhelming generosity shown to us by Hung, his family and his friends, Hai and Phong (did I mention that we had just passed through a city called Hai Phong?). He found our lost taxi on his scooter and guided us to his village which was located twenty minutes off the main road from Hanoi. The impossibly narrow road barely fit our taxi and seemed to get narrower and narrower the nearer we got to the village. Hung took us to see the bike, which due to its short stature was not to our liking, then took us to see his house.

There we were given the tour of the brand new two-story home (built for 8,000 US) and then introduced to Phong, who had a one gallon unmarked container of what appeared to be anti-freeze. In fact it was beer, gaffled from the local brewery by a villager who works there. The worker pilfers the brew then resells it to his fellow villagers. Halfway through the bottle we were joined by Hai, a 21 year old cousin who was down for good times. Poor Hung was translating three conversations at once, but after the second refill of anti-freeze and after the rice-wine-in-a-coke-bottle was introduced, the need for translation was seemingly reduced.

After we were all good and drunk, Hung decided that we needed the village tour. We visited Phong's house first. There we met his mother and his sleeping aunt and sister. We learned he liked Korean girls, was raised Catholic and that the statue on the mantle was depicting the Virgin Mary. We drank some special coffee, fresh from Ho Chi Minh city, and then we made our leave. Next we visited the local middle school. We walked straight into the schoolyard, met the principle and a shitload of kids who all ran up and shyly said "hello." Next was the neighboring orchid farm. After that we went to Hai's house. We met his Mom and sister and then retired to the sitting room to be served tea. After learning that we had spent the afternoon drinking, Hai's dad pulled a bottle of homemade rice wine from the hutch. This looked like a big, one-gallon glass jar, half filled with rice and half with water. The water turned out to be some POTENT liquor. Like a strong horchata-like vodka.

We stumbled out of Hai's house and moved on to Hung's parent's house. Somehow Hung's mom knew to whip up a meal of fried rice, cabbage and fish soup, which was served hot upon our arrival. We ate and then sat around and shot the shit for a while while watching Backstreet Boys videos on VCD. This is where I found out that Nick Carter, a member of Backstreet Boys is dating a Hilton. Hung makes money on the side by spinning wool into knit caps or trousers. He bought a machine that knits tubes. His sister and sister-in-law sit there all day, manning the machine. They also have five or six hogs in a small room separated from the house. Apparently they raise and sell those for extra cash.

Mike and I are strangers to these people, but we were totally embraced not just by one family, but by THREE! Can you imagine meeting someone on the street in San Francisco (someone who you know is ten times wealthier than you) and immediately getting them drunk, giving them a tour of your neighborhood, patiently answering all of their inane questions, introducing them to your parents, who without question cook them up a delicious meal, and then giving them a ride home to the other side of town? We were dumbfounded, and I'm still glowing at how overwhelmingly nice these people were. I just can't get over it. Have I mentioned how rad Vietnam is?